Lumbago may be caused by a tissue bulge that extends radially outward from a vertebrae and presses against the lumbar nerve. The condition is treated by surgically removing the bulge.
There are a number of other conditions that have similar origins, i.e., a nerve pinched by a piece of protruding tissue.
The method most often used to remove the offending tissue is to attack it with cutting devices; since the protruding tissue is immediately adjacent a nerve, care must of course be taken to avoid imparting trauma to the nerve.
The incision required to expose the protruding tissue may be large if the tissue removal is accomplished by conventional surgical techniques. However, where arthroscopic surgical techniques are used, the incision can be quite small. Still, arthroscopic surgeons are currently removing the tissue by attacking it with various cutting instruments; thus, the patient is spared the large incision, but the success of the procedure still depends on how much tissue is removed without damaging the nerve.
Since the advent of arthroscopy, the making of large incisions where such incisions are not needed has become an unacceptable practice. The short post-operative recovery periods made possible by arthroscopic techniques as well as the fact that many of such techniques can be performed on an out-patient basis makes arthroscopic procedures the procedures of choice for knowledgeable patients. Still, virtually all arthroscopic surgeons perform tissue-removal surgery by following the same cutting techniques used by nonarthroscopic surgeons. Thus, there is a need for a better method of removing protruding tissue, but the prior art, considered as a whole, neither teaches nor suggests how the techniques of the prior art could be improved.